ISSN ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 66 | December 2003
A Passion for Dance: National Library’s Curator of Dance Honoured at the Australian Dance Awards
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| Michelle Potter accepting her award at the Sydney Opera House |
A lifetime passionately dedicated to the collecting, archiving and documentation of Australian dance was acknowledged when the Curator of Dance at the National Library of Australia, Dr Michelle Potter, was honoured with the Award for Services to Dance at the 2003 Australian Dance Awards. The Awards, now in their seventh year, recognise dance excellence across all facets of the art form, and celebrate the achievements of Australia’s dance practitioners. This year’s event took place at the Sydney Opera House on November 16 and Michelle’s award was presented by Stephen Page and Frances Rings of Bangarra Dance Theatre.
The National Library was also actively involved in the Awards through its co-sponsorship with ScreenSound Australia of the Hall of Fame segment of the program. Both institutions provided still and moving images from their collections for an inspiring audio-visual tribute to some of Australia’s finest dance artists who had died during the past seven years.
Through her advocacy for dance, Michelle has been at the forefront in raising awareness amongst practitioners, the dance industry and the wider community, of the importance of generating and preserving dance materials as a means of creating a documentary record of Australian dance. Between 1997 and 2001 she led an Australia Council funded project Keep Dancing!—a strategic partnership between Ausdance (the Australian Dance Council), ScreenSound and the National Library—to preserve and describe dance in national collections. In 2002 she was appointed the Curator of Dance at the National Library and in this position has systematically led the development of a new national service, Australia Dancing <http://www.australiadancing.org>. This service aims to make Australian dance resources and collections more accessible to local, national and international communities.
Through her publications, exhibitions, dance criticism and public events, Michelle has actively promoted the use, research and interpretation of dance materials, increasing understanding of the history and significance of dance in Australian society. She is author of three National Library publications A Full House (1991), A Passion for Dance (1997) and A Collector’s Book of Australian Dance (2002). In 1996 she curated the National Library of Australia’s exhibition Dance People Dance, which toured Australia under a Visions of Australia grant until 1999. She has also interviewed many contributors to Australian dance for the Library’s Oral History collections, providing unique insight into the often hidden history of dance and documenting the synergies and relationships between Australian music, dance and theatre.
The award recognises the extent to which Michelle has encouraged and built
a recorded history of dance in Australia. Her passion for archiving dance has
been richly acknowledged both by her award and the collections that will be
preserved for generations to come, both in the National Library and partner
institutions. Other recipients of these prestigious awards included Graeme Murphy
(Outstanding Achievement in Choreography), Simone Goldsmith (Outstanding Performance
by a Female Dancer), Bradley Chatfield (Outstanding Performance by a Male Dancer),
Joshua Horner (Outstanding Performance in a Stage Musical), Sydney Dance Company
(Outstanding Performance by a Dance Company), Cheryl Stock (Lifetime Achievement),
Keith Bain (Services to Dance Education), Helen Herbertson (Independent Dance)
and Sue Healey (Dance Film).
—Robyn Holmes, Music Curator
| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: mbrooks@nla.gov.au